A Belgian court has ordered Google to stop using news stories from a number of French-language newspapers on its Web site. An organization called Copiepresse, which manages copyright for French and German newspapers in Belgium, had complained that Google does not ask permission to use the papers’ content, nor does it reimburse the papers, even […]

Researchers at Intel and the University of California, Santa Barbara, have developed a new kind of computer chip that transfers data between chips using lasers instead of wires, which have long been a bottleneck in computing. Fiber-optic technology allows data to travel very fast over long distances, but data-transfer rates remain a function of how […]

Following legal action by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, operators of the Taiwanese file-sharing service Kuro have agreed to discontinue their current operation and begin offering a legal music-download service. Previously, the federation had won a criminal case against executives at Fashionow, the company that developed and distributed the Kuro P2P software. Under […]

A communication professor at North Carolina State University (NCSU) has suspended his practice of selling audio recordings of his lectures over the Web after administrators raised questions about the practice.
Robert Schrag had been selling lectures since August for $2.50 each through a Web site called Independent Music Online. Despite having received approval from the head […]

A federal court in Illinois has issued a default ruling against British antispam organization Spamhaus and ordered it to pay $11.7 million to e360insight, the plaintiff in the matter. Officials from e360insight complained that Spamhaus included the company on its blacklist, alerting users of the list that e-mail from e360insight is spam and should be […]

Microsoft this week published the Open Specification Promise (OSP), in which the company promises not to assert patent authority over a number of Web services specifications. The move is part of Microsoft’s effort to encourage developers to build applications based on its Web services tools, which should allow interoperability among applications built on those standards. […]

Louisiana State University (LSU) has launched a new program under which it will provide identity-theft insurance to its faculty and staff. LSU did report a minor security breach several months ago, in which the personal information for about 67 students was compromised, but the new initiative is aimed at possible future problems. Under the terms […]

MetaMachine Inc., the company that developed the eDonkey file-sharing service, has reached an agreement with the entertainment industry that closes the doors on another P2P site. Under the terms of the deal, which must still be approved by a federal judge, the company will pay $30 million to avoid copyright infringement charges and will stop […]

Results of a recent survey indicate that at U.S. corporations, a considerable portion of IT security breaches are not reported. Nearly 80 percent of the respondents to the survey, which was conducted by Ponemon Institute, said that an insider-related breach has not been reported. More than 61 percent of the respondents said careless or untrained […]

Social networking site Facebook has announced plans to open the site to anyone, a fundamental change from how the site has functioned since it started operating two years ago. Initially, the site was restricted to individuals affiliated with participating college and university campuses. Since then, access was opened to high school students, with some restrictions, […]